Small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) should embrace Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), as one of the ways that could help them widen their market reach and export-base, experts at the just-concluded World Export Development Forum have said.

Richard Newfarmer, the Rwanda country director for International Growth Centre, said electronic commerce solutions and mobile telephony gives SMEs access to ideas, knowledge, inputs and markets.

"If farmers could get information about weather using their mobile phones, then they would know when to plant because timing is important in agribusiness,” he said.

Newfarmer urged firms to utilise SME to SME avenues to expand their market presence.

"Alibaba (a Chinese online giant) was created to link small business in China; but it also helps traders across the world. This means local businesses can import goods from China without necessarily having to go there personally,” he said of the successful website that starts selling its share on the New York Stock Exchange today.

Newfarmer said such a platform, with over 50,000 suppliers of different goods and services from different countries provides an easier and affordable means of getting quality products and on time.

"Maybe we should think of a similar African platform that could link various exporters to different markets across the world.”

Maurice Kagame, the chief executive officer of Pivot Access Rwanda, a local IT company, argued that it is important for SMEs to make life easier for the end user to access their products.

According to Gagan Khurana, the head of value chain partnerships at Grow Africa, an agri-solutions company, although 70 per cent of the farmers in Africa own mobile phones, only 20 per cent of them use them to seek information about prices in other markets or weather forecasts. Khurana called for more sensitisation on how SMEs can use ICTs to get new markets and grow their enterprises.

About 700 million of the people in Africa have mobile phones, which experts say is a big resource for the continent, that mainly relies on agriculture.